New Leaf June 2018 Discussion • The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

[Dngrsone]

Hollywood reinterprets much worse than that, to be sure.

Why hasn't this been written yet?

[Dazrin]

Apparently it has, although the review doesn't make it sound very satisfying. I'm sure there is another version out there somewhere.

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by orlok

I'm with issybird in that I quite enjoyed it, accepting all it's many flaws. I certainly didn't hate it like some here seem to. It helped to listen to it, I think, rather than read it myself. I thought that much of the time Dumas was trying for humour or irony, even if it didn't always succeed, and incidents like D'Artagnan selling his horse didn't bother me at all. You give a kid something in the expectation that they will do with it as they will, in my experience.


And I may be alone in being the only one who cheered Milady's death. Yes, she was undoubtedly the best character in the book, and the story only really took off once she appeared, but her murder of the put-upon Constance, so unnecessary, was what did it for me. She richly deserved her fate.

I didn't hate the book or find it dreadfully hard to read it through to the end. I do agree that Milady was the best character in the book because, exaggerated though it was, we do get a real sense of her as a three-dimensional character, where most of the rest of the cast are two-dimensional, with some not much more than cardboard cut-outs.

Even with its flaws, I certainly don't regret that we chose this book to read. It has been an interesting experience for me to read it at a rather more mature age (ahem!) than I was at my first reading, and to realise how much I skipped over the bad behaviour which I now find so unacceptable.

I think the fact that we have had quite a bit to say about it and enjoyed our discussion is more important than whether we enjoyed the plot or the characters.

[bfisher]

Well said, Bookpossum.

Dumas had real talents as a writer, used in a bad service in this case. It was an extremely valuable experience for me to reread this novel; I am abashed at my deeply embedded sense of male privilege, that I could have read this so blindly before.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

[...] I think the fact that we have had quite a bit to say about it and enjoyed our discussion is more important than whether we enjoyed the plot or the characters.

Definitely. The book was a disappointment (the more so because I was expecting to enjoy this one), but as usual the discussion has been fun - and drawn in a few visitors which adds a bit more spice.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Even with its flaws, I certainly don't regret that we chose this book to read. It has been an interesting experience for me to read it at a rather more mature age (ahem!) than I was at my first reading, and to realise how much I skipped over the bad behaviour which I now find so unacceptable.

I think the fact that we have had quite a bit to say about it and enjoyed our discussion is more important than whether we enjoyed the plot or the characters.

Me neither, I'm glad to have finally read it. I guess what I was most disappointed with is that I really enjoyed The Count of Monte Cristo, and this was nowhere near as good/satisfying. I agree with pretty much everything that has been said about the "laddish" culture, and the lack of the qualities we have come to associate with the Musketeers through film and TV portrayals. I didn't feel there was even much loyalty amongst the four of them, let alone to anyone else. And yet there were elements of the story I appreciated - I learned a bit about the history of the times; I liked the fact that it was interwoven with "real" people; and at times I was sucked into the story, most notably around the machinations of Milady and the Cardinal.

[astrangerhere]

It has been interesting to see what is, essentially, a hate-read for a good number of us. Glad everyone banded together to power through it.

In other news, I loved Dandelion Wine far more than I thought I would have a whole file of notes ready to go for July :

[Bookpossum]

Yes indeed, I do think we all have a rosier view of the book because of all the film adaptations over the years, which left out or skated over the worst behaviour and gave us a few hours of fun and adventure. Oh, and lovely costumes!

It's worth googling the statue of Dumas in Paris, to see the gorgeous looking D'Artagnan perched noncholantly at the back of it. It so perfectly encapsulates the way many of us probably thought about him and his buddies.

ETA: Sorry, I was writing this when astrangerhere put in her post, so sorry it doesn't follow on smoothly.

Good to know you enjoyed Dandelion Wine - I'm looking forward to reading it.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by orlok

at times I was sucked into the story, most notably around the machinations of Milady and the Cardinal.

I also liked the scene between Queen Anne and Buckingham, the stuff of high romance and in a way the fulcrum of the whole novel. Did the thwarted romance start the war and lead to everything else?

[Catlady]

Oh, I'm glad I read it too--just because it's one of those classics that everyone's supposed to be familiar with. I don't quite see why it's considered a classic, though. After reading it, I read the scholarly introduction in the BN edition and looked at some of the analyses and critiques in various online study guides. I was surprised that they seemed generally favorable to and admiring of the musketeers--pretty much the opposite of what we here thought of them. I don't remember any of them mentioning the blatant misogyny. If kids are reading it today, I hope they're not being taught that the musketeers are just a free-wheeling, rambunctious group of charming scoundrels.

Is anyone here familiar with the Musketeers Mystery series by Sarah D'Almeida? I discovered I have the first book in my Calibre library, though I never read it. (For some reason I didn't realize it was about the Dumas musketeers till just now reading the blurb.) The five books of the series are all in Kindle Unlimited, by the way.

FYI, YouTube has the Douglas Fairbanks silent movie version; I hope to watch that one of these days. But first I have to watch the Mickey Mouse version, which I remembered I have on DVD--somewhere. I even found a Barbie version on YouTube--but, alas, she's not playing Milady.

[issybird]

Thanks especially for the Fairbanks link, which should be fun.

I'm interested enough in the story that I plan to get to Twenty Years After at some point. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a recent vintage translation, but perhaps I'll give the Simon Vance narration a go. He could read me the phone book, as they say.

I'm not sure my interest will last through all the sequels, however!

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by issybird

I also liked the scene between Queen Anne and Buckingham, the stuff of high romance and in a way the fulcrum of the whole novel. Did the thwarted romance start the war and lead to everything else?

The real Buckingham had a habit of ginning up wars to distract Parliament from impeaching him. He might have been the original Wags the Dog.

At one point, he tried to cut a deal with Richelieu that would have had England provide aid to Richelieu against La Rochelle in exchange for French aid in an English expedition against the Spanish occupation of the Palatinate. That actually made sense, as Charles I was married to Louis' sister and Charles' sister was married to the Elector of the Palatinate.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by bfisher

The real Buckingham had a habit of ginning up wars to distract Parliament from impeaching him. He might have been the original Wags the Dog.

At one point, he tried to cut a deal with Richelieu that would have had England provide aid to Richelieu against La Rochelle in exchange for French aid in an English expedition against the Spanish occupation of the Palatinate. That actually made sense, as Charles I was married to Louis' sister and Charles' sister was married to the Elector of the Palatinate.

You have to give Buckingham credit for parlaying genteel origins and gorgeousness into high office and also for negotiating the change from James I to Charles I so nimbly. Assuming he had indeed been James's lover, it's not every son who'd feel so warmly to his father's boyfriend.

Tangentially, you have to feel a little sorry for Anne of Austria, at least in her fictional version. Buckingham, of course, might not have been gay or bi but just have had an eye for his main chance (a variation on the Victorian exhortation to young women who shrank from the marriage bed, "Close your eyes and think of England."). Louis (the Chaste), on the other hand, showed no physical interest in his wife, even for someone who had a vested interest in an heir of his body. In that day when so much depending on inheritance, there must have been a lot of thinking of England (or country of choice) when it came to marriage and children.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I don't have much to say about the book. I'm glad to check the box that I read it. I mostly wished it were shorter. I didn't find the antics that amusing or honorable. I thought the villainy of Milady made it more entertaining. I didn't take it too seriously. I tried to imagine how the public would've reacted to the cliffhangers and serialized plot at the time it was written. It was very popular, and he wrote to keep them engaged for the next episode.

I had more fun in researching the history behind the book. I thought these articles were interesting. Who were the real D'Artagnan and the Musketeers?
https://historytheinterestingbits.co...eal-dartagnan/
https://history.howstuffworks.com/hi.../musketeer.htm

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss has been on my TBR for awhile, and I hope to read it someday.

From Goodreads:

Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.

The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature.

Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave -- who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East – until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.

The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks for the interesting links, Bookworm_Girl. I too would like to read Reiss' book about the author's father.

As a trivial aside, the latest version of The Three Musketeers by the BBC, includes Howard Charles playing Porthos, the man said to have been based on the author's father, at least in terms of his great height.